Alan Moore Culture Show pt5

[GabrielaFA]

Needless to say, I am now A HUGE fan of Alan Moore and have read most of his major works.

Sorry for the long story. My point is that I do think Alan Moore hates that his work was 'adapted' into films, because, damn, EVEN I hate it.

I am living proof of the diservice that Hollywood has done to Moore's work.

Had I not read the actual comics, I would have though it was just 'comic stories'.

Fuck Hollywood and their watered down versions of almost EVERY story they 're take'.

LONG LIVE ALAN MOORE!

[GabrielaFA]

Not knowing the background of the films I just thought to myself, Yeah, comics are indeed boring.

Then about a year after watching Watchmen a friend of mine told me he could not believe I did not enjoy Alan Moore's work (I was basing my opinions on the movie, wrongfully) because he thought I would agree with a lot of the views he presents on his comics. He lent me Watchment and just 20 mins into reading it I could tell I had found what I could not point out during the movie adaptations.

[GabrielaFA]

Personally I can say that (maybe cause I'm a girl) I had never read a comic before and had no idea who Alan Moore was until I was about 21 or so.

Prior to that I watched V for Vendetta and Watchmen - not really because I wanted to, but because my friends wanted to watch them. And I remember during both movies being EXTREMELY bored but at times feeling like "there was something there" that I could not quite point and it would dissapear whenever I tried to find it.

[Superfreaxx]

@GabrielaFA

I'm a guy my experience with watching V for Vendetta was very much the same as yours. I knew that something at the writing or execution level had misfired, then I remembered during the films release campaign that Alan Moore said he hated the script. So to figure out what went wrong, I read the comic and never looked back.

[manny4life]

damn.....I'm sorry for Alan Moore...Hollywood has really raped his work.

[theman66613]

Fuck DC and fuck Hollywood, and if you want to know something that is beyond ironic google watchmen, on the shopping result one of the first results I got was not the novel, but of a link to selling Nite Owl action figures at hot topic, its a damn shame that its being turned into everything it criticized.

[togio100]

don't worry. Nobody's really buying the a lot of merchandise for the movie anyway

If anything's being sold, it's the comic.

[bartocorleone]

and if you ask me... i think that alan moore , in secret, he loves that his work is so important to be considered for being adapted to the cinema.

he says what he says to create a "j.d salinger" pose... so everybody who sees him thinks... "here's a guy who doesn't take crap from nobody" but everybody, in some kind of way wants to be recognized... even if the say that they don't

[bartocorleone]

i think that if alan moore watch the watchmen movie... he would be pleased...

[rbogart123]

No, no he wouldn't. He didn't like V for Vendetta, he didn't like LoEG, and he didn't like From Hell. What on earth would make you think he'd enjoy sitting through almost 3 hours of his comic being run through a wood chipper?

[bartocorleone]

why?

because, you named from hell, LoEG and v for vendetta

those three movies were adaptations not too trusty to the original material... like the alan moore himself said "From hell was a movie to showcase johnny depp". if you take the experiment that the wachowski bros did with v for vendetta you can see that they change the story to make it a "i love democracy" story.

watchmen used 95%, at least, of the original material. snyder manteined the iconic images and stories of the comic...

[rbogart123]

He maintained iconic images and some stories from the plot while simultaneously cutting away major parts of the story and characters. He added totally unnecessary gore and violence, changed the nature of Dr.Manhattan's personality, and takes out most, if not all of the philosophical and psychological implications that made the book so great.

[natmanprime]

I agree with rbogart123. The most annoying bits were that goddmamn smirk CONSTANTLY on the faces of ozzy and on Kovacs as a child after he bites ear. It totally betrays A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHARACTERS. Also when rorschach goes apeshit on the psychologist (wtf?) and most hilarious when niteowl tells ozzy to shove it at the end of movie and he's then yelling "noooooooo!" when rorschach gets blasted.

Minor points if you don't understand the point of the book.

[Superfreaxx]

@bartocorleone

Watchmen used 95% of the plot from the book. Not 95% of the narrative.

[CineRecon]

I don't care what he says, he has to be somewhat pleased that Watchmen was at least close.

[Crablogger]

I wouldn't call it close.

[fuhrerschein2008]

Personally, I think V for Vendetta was a good movie. Not as brilliant as the graphic novel of course.

And I can very well understand Moore's opinion because they changed the topic: in the book, V fights against fascism and for anarchy - whereas anarchy is never even mentioned in the film; there, I think, it seems as if V was fighting for a democratic system as Europe and the US have it now.

[ZombieDragQueen]

@fuhrerschein2008

Depends on how you define anarchism. Provided that humans would take their responsabilities and cooperated in an anarchistic society, that would be the true form of democracy, where everybody has the same rights and duties based on the collective good of the society. So I think it was clear in the film V was fighting for a radical cause and the message of it is today yet more poignant than when the book was written.

[fuhrerschein2008]

@ZombieDragQueen In the film V says: "People shouldn't be afraid of their government, but every government should be afraid of the people", perhaps in slightly different words - while Moore's point is not that the government should afraid of their people, but that there should not be any government at all.

[FrenziedLogic]

I think secretly Alan moore likes his comics being adapted, simply because hes happy that his work is well loved. Because if he really hated them, he wouldn't alow them to make them at all. Alan Moore is a very stubborn guy, but he is great.

[WickedNemesis]

I can't speak for his other adapted works, but as for The Watchmen, Alan is TOTALLY against the movie, but he has no say so. The rights are owned by Vertigo. They are the one's who optioned the graphic novel. It's probably true about his other writings as well.

[FrenziedLogic]

Oh I see, how unfortunate that the author himself has so little rights to his own works.

[WickedNemesis]

i guess thats just frenzied logic. and it is unfortunate

[NorseRonin]

in the movie v for vendetta, they didn't put in that v uses lsd, and the detective following him took it in order to catch up with him. it's not very important but it would have been cool to see what v sees, and it would have been enlightening

[mortimerkhan]

... Finch definitely drops acid at the remnants of Lark Hill but I don't recall V ever taking LSD during the book.

[NorseRonin]

you're right it never said that V trips, that's an assumption on my part, because finch took it in order to know how he thinks, so he can catch up with him. it would have been cool to see finch tripping in the movie though. it seems like in every alan moore graphic novel the characters are inspired by acid, or the story and how it's set up. just reading his stuff makes me feel like i'm having flashbacks :D

[Tribad]

You tell'em, Alan!

[dubzy81]

v for vendetta was an awful mainstream piece of dogshit

[sksmithy00]

I agree for the most part... but I really think Hugo Weaving did an awesome job as V.

[dubzy81]

Yeah as far as voices go.

[TakumProti]

Pff! Yeah, he was okay. Hey, it wasn't Weaving's fault that the movie stank like a rotting corpse and deviated so horribly from the book so unnecissarily.

[RetinendParadox]

I think you need to look at it more objectively. I love the book, and the film glosses a great deal of its message in order to make it more simple and 'relevant' to the present times, but I enjoyed it as a movie. What's so wrong with a film deviating from its source material, anyway?

[TakumProti]

Because in this case it was quite unecissary. Now sure the date of the story got changed which is understandable, they changed the date in Philip K. Dick's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. But the problem is that Alan Moore said it best that the story was about Fascism, Anarchy, and England and that the Wachowskis turned it into a poor parable for Bush Era America. They didn't need to do that. The story was fine as it was overall.

[Rodimus78]

They didn't need to make this film at all you know. You know that the Wachowskis were only exploiting V as a pretense to promote their Anti-Bush Pornography. There's enough satirical rhetoric about Bush 24hrs a day, so why tamper with someone's book instead of make their own from scratch?I doubt that they're fans at all b/c if they were, they wouldn't have smite Mr. Moore in the big screen with their immature one-lining nod to his protest. Those 2 guys & their admirers of the flick are bullshit.

[0BatGirl0]

I think Frank Miller has had a better run with his movie adaptations. The films based of Alan's comics were enertaining but were a mere shadow of their comic counterparts.

V for Vendetta was awesome, it got me interested in his works but alot of the important bits were left out and they changed it to be more relevant to today's society.

Hollywood seems to have run out of it's own ideas and are just adapting novels because they know it's an easy way to make money.

[cdowg187]

DING DING DING DING DING! You hit it right on the head sister!

V for Vendetta so far is the only one that even has the same kind of feel as the book.

But honestly I really am looking forward to see what they do with Watchmen. I guess as long as they get the over all story correct, that's all we can ask for! However the books are ALWAYS better then the movies, because they're not rushed, you can take your time with them n shit.

[0BatGirl0]

The guy who directed 300 is directing Watchmen and he did a pretty good job of that. Then again Frank has a more cinematic style of story telling.

I'm glad I read Watchmen before seeing the movie. I read V after seeing the movie, which kind of ruins it as you subconciously compare it to the film.

[cdowg187]

Yeah, I absolutely LOVED 300. I had read the book before I saw the movie.

Watchmen is gonna be harder to pull off though, because with 300 they had to fill in some blanks. The entire story line with the queen and all that shit.

Watchmen has SO much more detail to it. But like I said, I just want the story to have the same feel as it does in the book.

[Rodimus78]

You're tampering with a Pandora's Box. You don't know what you're asking....believe me. If you can.

[doctorHOUSE]

300 was a pile of fucking horse shit, x-men movies were a pile of fucking horse shit, fantastic four movies were a pile of fucking horse shit, hulk was a pile of fucking horse shit, superman returns was a pile of fucking horse shit, chris nolan & chris bale restored dignity to batman, v for vendetta was a pile of fucking horse shit, and from what i've seen new hulk film, new iron man film, new watchmen film look like horse shit! ALAN MOORE = GENIUS

[Rodimus78]

Does that include transformers movie from last year as a pile of fucking horse shit too?

[natmanprime]

I agree with Doctor House! The Doctor is indeed in the HOUSE with his clarity of thought amidst all the delusion!

His comment should not be hidden!

[mpasdos]

i loved it when he said "if you are going to make them into films please try to make them into BETTER ones."

[23JM23]

Does he not have the final say as to whether the comics get turned into films? He may as well take the money he's offered and plough it into some more radical 'underground' projects, but I admire his rejection of Hollywood. I think he still lives in a terraced house in Northampton.

[ambersumiko]

I feel so sorry for the guy. You can hear the hurt in his voice! :(:(:(:(:(

[tricro]

ok, from hell was bad, league of extraordinary gentlemen was terrible, but v for vendetta wasnt totally off

[ambersumiko]

I just rented LOEG a few days ago, and couldn't believe what they had done. I couldn't finish watching it. I'm not as worried about Watchmen though.

[zeno7774]

I read a little of one of the Hollywood Watchman scripts written in the late 1980's (I read it online), and it only resembles Watchman in name. Watchman is near impossible to film. Reading the comic novel is much like going to see a great movie anyway. DIfference is it can take weeks for the movie to unfold in my mind. God bless you Alan Moore.

[Lasergoose]

Amen, Alan Moore. I've loved everything I've read that he's written, and while I don't think anything is "impossible" to adapt to the screen, the adaptation will differ from the source material. So for goodness' sake, Hollywood, why not make a good movie out of good source material? They're doing Watchmen next. Here's hoping it doesn't suck. BTW, anyone ever try to find Miracleman? One collection of three or four issues goes for almost $500 on Amazon.

[chambermusic]

He didn't say Hellblazer. Most of forgot about that one like everyone else who saw the movie constantine.

[Chinaboatman]

Probably 'forgot' it because he never wrote any of Hellblazer. He created the character for Swamp Thing but he never wrote a single issue of Hellblazer.

[hlwarrior]

I agree with Alan Moore, his comics were butchered by the movies.

[Rodimus78]

God bless you 'hlwarrior'. There's somebody out there other than me who support of Alan Moore's logical discontent w/ hollywood's tampering of his art against his will.

[technoflex]

To hear Alan as the voice of fate from the original'Fringe' production of 'V' which I directed in Kings cross.1991. Go to mark-fox.co.uk and dload pap3!

M.

www.mark-fox.co.uk

[jeroid]

Sorry Mark, I cannot find this, although I would love to hear it. Can you give more specific link please?

[Chinaboatman]

Me too

[pogo747]

zing! that is scathing! gonna go read his graphic novels now.

[pivic]

Brilliant upload, and paired with Aphex Twin's music from "Selected Ambient Works II" the video turns greater still.